ROBERT D. ELDRIDGE is Associate Professor at the Osaka School of International Public Policy, Japan.PAUL MIDFORD is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway.

"The portrait presented of Japanese political opinion and communication manifests considerable diversity" - Pacific Affairs "This volume uses comprehensive polling data and media content analysis to demonstrate the shift in Japanese public opinion from broad pacifism to defensive realism over the past decade. The authors offer a nuanced assessment of both the strategic significance of that change and the continued constraints on Japan s military role." - Michael J. Green, Associate Professor, Department of International Relations, and Japan Chair, CSIS, Georgetown University; author of Japan s Reluctant Realism (2000).

• Japanese Mass Opinion towards the War on Terrorism Framing Japanese Homeland Security: Mass Media and Public Opinion Japan's Insider and Outside Media Discourse about the SDF Dispatch to Iraq Japanese Political Parties Face Public Opinion: Leading, Responding, or Ignoring? Japanese Intellectuals and Public Opinion in the War on Terrorism Japanese Civil Society, NGOs, and Spatializing Politics: Mobilization of Public Opinion and the War in Iraq Public Opinion in a Base Community: Okinawa and the War on Terrorism